Wisdom of Teams

So I won't go into details as to how I came across this book, but I will say that it involves a superintendant, a bad interview, and a professional growth plan. 'Nuff said. So I'm only half-way through the book, but I've already had a couple of paradigm shifts as it relates to teams. The referenced book is The Wisdom of Teams by Jon R. Katzenbach and Douglas K. Smith. For the most part it references teams in the corporate setting, but the concepts are universal. The interesting thing that has stuck out to me as of yet is the idea that what most of us consider is a 'team' is really not; it's what the authors of this book would call a 'working group' where one person takes leadership, divies out responsibilities, and everyone works individually to slide their slice into the group unit. That's what a typical 'team' looks like more often than not (those are most of my group experiences).
One of the main things that I'm beginning to open my eyes to is the importance of establishing a purpose. Lots of times, we challenge students to work in teams so as to teach them 'teamwork' or to learn how to work in others. Most of the time, those situtations don't yield positive results because they often fail and students build negative impressions of what they think is a 'team.' For a team to work, among other things, there has to be a clear purpose with a specific performance goal. There has to be a meaningful and mutual drive for the group to become a 'team.' Perhaps that is why student publications like yearbooks and newspapers often work well, because there is naturally a clear purpose and performance goal: to produce a product. What that looks like in a 9th grade English classroom may take some other forms (of which I'm still considering). This is really challenging my thinking.